Lecture text.
Lecture 26. Domestic policy of Peter I.
Basic concepts:
Magistrate; “assigned peasants”; "possession peasants"; magistrate; mercantilism; protectionism; fiscals; collegiums; assemblies;
The development of the entire country depended on the development of the economy. Anisimov called what happened in the 18th century “industrialization in Petrovsky style.” Reforms in industry took the leading place in Peter's reforms.
Peter encouraged the development of trade and industry. By the beginning of Peter's reign, there were only 15 large manufactories. From 1700 to 1725, about 200 enterprises were created. The main attention was paid to metallurgy. Its center moved to the Urals, where the Nevyansk plant was the first to be built. Weapons, anchors, nails, etc. were produced at the Ural factories and at the Sestroretsk plant in St. Petersburg. In 1704, a silver smelting plant was built in distant Nerchinsk.
The Arsenal and the Admiralty Shipyard grew up in the capital. Only during the life of Peter 1, 59 large and more than 200 small ships were built in St. Petersburg. The fleet needed canvas, and the army needed uniforms. These and other products were produced by sailing-linen, cloth and leather factories. In 1725, there were only 25 textile enterprises in Russia. There were rope and gunpowder manufactories, cement factories, paper factories, and even sugar factories.
The government protected the country from supplies from abroad of those goods that were produced in Russian factories. Such goods were subject to heavy duties. At the same time, the export of Russian goods increased.
In manufactories, forced labor of serfs and state peasants purchased and assigned to them was widely used.
The creation of merchant "companies" and the expansion of trade relations with foreign countries were encouraged in every possible way. Those merchants who exported goods on their own ships were entitled to significant tax benefits.
The main burdens of the transformations of Peter's time fell on the shoulders of the peasants. Many new duties arose. These include mobilization for the construction of cities, fortresses and ships, conscription, permanent conscription. Submarine conscription became even more burdensome than before.
It was known that landowners were hiding the number of their households in order to reduce taxes. Peter, at the suggestion of profit-makers (people who came up with ways to replenish the treasury), moved on to collecting taxes not from the courtyard, but from the male soul. In 1718, a capitation census was started. In 1722-1724. conducted an audit (verification) of the results of this census. The audit discovered the concealment of a million male souls. In the spring of 1724, a more or less exact figure of the revision souls finally became known - 5.4 million. The tax levied on the peasants went to the maintenance of the land army, the tax from the townspeople - to the maintenance of the fleet.
As a result of the audit and the associated tax reform, a passport system was introduced in the country. Now every peasant, going to work at a distance of over 30 miles from his home, was required to have a passport with him. The passport indicated the deadline for the peasant's return.
The passport system made it easier for teams of detectives to combat the flight of peasants. Every peasant who did not have a passport and was away from his home was subject to detention.
In 1703, Peter issued a decree on “assigned peasants,” who were assigned to manufactories to work at the expense of state taxes. In 1721, there was a decree “on possessional peasants.” Business owners were allowed to buy peasants to work with.
Main articles: Russian peasants, Society under Peter I
see Tax reform of Peter I
First population census and introduction of passports
In order to take into account the number of people in the country who must pay the per capita tax, a census (audit) of the population was conducted for the first time in the history of Russia. These lists were called revision tales. In 1724, passports were introduced, which allowed the state to provide a system of control over its subjects and limit the possibilities of movement around the country.
Demidov factories. During the time of Peter I, one of the largest private owners of manufactories was Nikita Demidov. He produced iron at the Ural Nevyanovsky factories, which he sold to the state for the needs of the army. Often fugitives were used at Demidov's factories. In this way they evaded justice, and Demidov did not pay taxes for them, because they were not accounted for anywhere. The life of such workers was very difficult. They lived in basements that could easily be flooded if a government check on the number of workers suddenly came.
State peasants
Under Peter the Great, the composition of state peasants changed. These included, as before, the black-growing peasants of the Russian North; local population and Russian settlers in Siberia; peoples of the Volga region. However, some of the former service people also switched to the position of state peasants, who paid a per capita tax. Thus, under Peter, all rural residents who did not belong to secular and church owners were united into a single estate. State peasants bore the burden. They were considered free subjects of the state.
Serfs
However, the monarch could “grant” (donate) state lands to his associates for their merits. And the state peasants who lived on them could thus become serfs. This began to happen in post-Petrine times.
Privately owned peasants (patrimonial, monastic, patriarchal, etc.) became a single group of serfs. Servitude as a class was eliminated. Serfs merged with serfs. The country became almost entirely serfdom.
Assigned peasants
The increase in the number of state-owned manufactories under Peter I required providing them with labor. A decree from the tsar followed - to “assign” black-powder peasants to manufactories so that they would work there for several months a year. And the wages due to them were counted as taxes to the state. Such serfs were called “assigned”. Material from the site http://wikiwhat.ru
Possessional peasants
Tsar Peter I encouraged the development of private manufactories, the owners of which were close to him. Their owners were allowed to buy entire villages, own them and use the peasants of these villages to work in factories. Such peasants began to be called possessions (from the word “possession” - I own). “Eternally given” were the students who were enslaved by their owners “in payment” for training in blue-collar skills.
Life of people under Peter I
see Life of people under Peter I
Material from the site http://WikiWhat.ru
On this page there is material on the following topics:
State peasants under Peter the Great
Rights and obligations of peasants under Peter 1 table
Life of local residents under Peter 1
Life of peasants in the 18th century in Shadrinsk
What did peasants eat during the time of Peter 1?
Transformations required constant funds. The tax burden constantly increased and reached such proportions that almost immediately after the death of the emperor (who, by the way, was proud that he was giving the state to his heirs without public debt), the Senate (an unprecedented case) recognized the impossibility of fulfilling all financial obligations to the state in full, i.e.
e. “de facto” he wrote off a significant part of the existing debts to the treasury.
Since the agricultural sector remained the economic basis of budget formation, land policy activities were oriented in the interests of increasing the efficiency of tax collection.
Instead of estates and estates, a new concept of “real estate” or “estate” was introduced.
In 1714, landowners received the right to complete and unlimited disposal of land, without being obliged, as before, to serve in government positions and maintain a local army.
In order to strengthen feudal land ownership and protect it from fragmentation in order to maintain the profitability of estates, the Decree “On Single Inheritance in Real Estate” was issued, according to which land ownership was to be inherited by one (usually the eldest) of the owner’s sons.
(This innovation did not take root in life. Until 1917, fragmentations and mergers (but more often, still fragmentations) were an “economic scourge” that did not allow landowners to switch to capitalist production, and led to the impoverishment of a significant part of the nobility.
Under Peter I, the system of collecting land taxes was changed. With the introduction of the per capita tax instead of the land tax, the tax collection system was significantly simplified, since the need for quantitative and qualitative land records was eliminated, the costs of collecting taxes were reduced, and the entire working population was involved in payments, which served to increase state revenues.
Another transformation of land relations carried out by Peter I was the secularization (withdrawal in favor of the state) of part of the monastic, church and synodal lands; a number of decrees were issued limiting the growth of church and monastic land ownership.
Previously, the government protected peasants from a direct transition into servitude by establishing “peasant eternity,” that is, a ban on the transition of peasants to other class categories, not excluding serfs.
Slaves did not pay taxes. By protecting the peasants from becoming serfs, the government retained state tax payers.
In 1695, by decree of Tsar Peter, they began to take taxes from the lands cultivated by slaves. By imposing on the arable slaves the same burden that the peasants bore, the government, one might say, equated one to the other.
By decree of January 22, 1719, only peasants and arable slaves were included in the tax lists. In subsequent years, the census further expands its scope and includes slaves of all types in its lists or tales.
peasants under Peter 1
In 1723, all household servants were included in the census, even if they did not plow the land and were only in the personal service of their masters.
In 1722, after the states of the clergy were established in rural and urban churches, all clergy and clerics were recorded in the poll tales of the owners on whose lands they lived
POSSESSIONAL - serf peasants in Russia in the 18th - 1st half of the 19th centuries. , assigned to possessional manufactories. Possession peasants could not be sold separately from the enterprise. The category of possession peasants was introduced under Peter I in 1721 due to the need to provide workers for the growing large-scale manufacture. The possessional peasants included peasants bought to the “factories”, “eternally given away” by decree of January 7, 1736, and state-owned artisans transferred to the owners of possessional manufactories.
ASSIGNED PEASANTS - in Russia in the 17th - first half of the 19th centuries, state, palace and economic peasants, instead of paying the poll tax, worked in state-owned or private plants and factories, that is, attached (assigned) to them. At the end of the 17th century. and especially in the 18th century. The government, in order to support large-scale industry and provide it with cheap and constant labor, widely practiced assigning state peasants to manufactories in the Urals and Siberia. Usually, assigned peasants were attached to manufactories without a specific period of time, that is, forever. Formally they remained the property of the feudal state, but in practice the industrialists exploited and punished them as their serfs. At the end of the 18th century, the government stopped assigning peasants to factories again. By decree of 1807, assigned peasants at the Ural mining factories began to be freed from mandatory factory work. At the beginning of the 19th century, assigned peasants called “essential workers” entered the category of POSSESSIONAL peasants, which was liquidated in 1861-1863. with the abolition of serfdom.
POLL TAX - a form of tax, tax, which was imposed on all men of the tax-paying classes, regardless of age: both newborns and old people, for the maintenance of the army. The cost of maintaining soldiers was divided by the number of available tax souls.
Craft workshops were a trade and craft corporation that united masters of one or more similar professions, or a union of medieval craftsmen based on their profession. In Russia, a system of guilds by profession was introduced during the reign of Peter I, which lasted for almost 200 years. Each workshop had its own administration. Belonging to the workshop could be temporary or permanent. From 3 to 5 years, the craftsman worked as an apprentice, then received the title of journeyman; for the title of master, he had to present an approved masterpiece - a “sample of work.” All workshops in the city were in charge of the craft council.
Question to point I No. 1. On the map (pp. 114-115) show the most important industrial facilities created under Peter I.
Metallurgical plants of Tula, Nizhny Tagil, Nevyansk, Yekatihrenburg and Petropavlovskaya, shipbuilding shipyards of Arkhangelsk, Lodeyna Field, Vyborg, St. Petersburg, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Bryansk, Voronezh, Pristan town and Astrakhan, textile manufactories of Kazan, Yaroslavl, Moscow and Voronezh.
Question to point I No. 2. Explain the difference between assigned peasants and possessional peasants.
Assigned peasants are state peasants who were assigned to industrial enterprises; Possessionals were serfs who performed the same work.
Question to point II No. 1. Tell us about the development of trade under Peter I.
Active internal trade was going on even before Peter; the reformer tsar began to develop external, especially maritime trade. He built seaports and developed them, also by order. For example, a special decree ordered that goods be transported not to Arkhangelsk, but to St. Petersburg.
Question to point II No. 2. Explain the meaning of the concepts “mercantilism” and “protectionism”.
Mercantilism is a government policy aimed at maximizing treasury revenues.
Protectionism is a government policy aimed at protecting domestic producers from foreign competition.
Question to paragraph No. 1. Who played a decisive role in the development of Russian trade and industry - the state represented by the Tsar or merchants and entrepreneurs? Compare the development paths of Russian and Western European industry.
The state played a decisive role in the development of industry. The merchants made a certain contribution, but less than the government, even despite the Berg privilege. In Russia, it was difficult to get initial capital to start a business without having an estate. And the owners of the estates, most often, did not want to invest money in production.
Question to paragraph No. 2. Which features of the socio-economic life of Russia in the 17th century were preserved, and which appeared as a result of the reforms of Peter I:
The basis of the country's economy is agriculture;
This situation has been maintained since the founding of the Old Russian state.
Specialization of economic regions;
It arose under the first Romanovs until Peter I.
Active industrial development of the Urals;
It began precisely under Peter I, allowing Russia to stop importing iron and soon begin exporting it.
Development of local land ownership;
Landownership developed with the advent of the noble class, but under Peter I it received a new impetus when estates were equated to estates - they became private hereditary property, which, however, could not be divided when transferred by inheritance.
The formation of a single all-Russian market;
Happened under the first Romanovs before Peter I.
Manufacturing;
The first manufactories arose under the first Romanovs before Peter I, but under the first emperor there were many more of them.
Protectionist policy;
It was carried out spontaneously even before Peter I (foreigners were simply not trusted and not everyone was allowed into Russia), but as a purposeful policy it began precisely under the first emperor with the introduction of the Customs Tariff and a number of other similar measures.
Registration of peasants to factories;
It began with the advent of manufactories under the first Romanovs; under Peter I, possession peasants appeared in factories.
Excess of exports of Russian goods over imports;
It began precisely under Peter I.
Construction of canals;
It began precisely under Peter I.
Growing number of entrepreneurs.
It was under Peter I, under the Berg privilege, that factories began to be founded by people outside the state machine, and not by foreigners, as was the case under the first Romanovs; but such enterprising people could hardly be called free entrepreneurs.
Question to paragraph No. 3. Find out what industrial facilities existed in your city/region in Peter’s time.
A settlement of self-made blacksmiths (masters in the manufacture of firearms, then still matchlock weapons) was founded in Tula in 1595 by order of Tsar Fyodor Ioanovich. In 1632, the Dutch merchant Andreas Vinnius, having received a charter from Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich, founded an ironworks near Tula for the production of cannonballs and cannons. Soon, in 1652, also near Tula, near the village of Chentsovo, the Dutch Akema and Marcelius built another factory for the production of various weapons. But it is with the names of Peter I and the outstanding figure of his era, Nikita Demidov, that the true flourishing of Tula is associated. In 1712, by personal decree of Peter I, a state-owned arms factory was founded, which became the foundation of the modern Tula arms factory.